The Puzzling Nature of the Cross
by GUROLoli
Summary: The incarceration of Sirius Black in Azkaban and all the blanks yet to fill. M for violent/grotesque imagery.
1. First

**The Puzzling Nature of the Cross**

_The incarceration of Sirius Black in Azkaban and all the blanks yet to fill. M for violent/grotesque imagery._

* * *

**First**

When Sirius Black looks closely, he can still see the shadows of the welts that once circled his wrists.

But he doesn't actually see them, he supposes. His skin is too filthy to make out any sort of mark anymore—his other blemishes have all long since disappeared under a layer of grime.

But he knows that he still sees them if he only looks hard enough.

There are times when he can still feel his hands shaking like they did on that day. He can still feel the rawness of his throat from screaming himself hoarse. He can still feel the sting of the shackles themselves, the shackles that had rubbed up against his skin and left self-imagined scars.

The sting will worsen if he lets himself dwell on the memory, so he tries not to dwell.

The problem is, there isn't much else to do in a place like this.

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More parts to come, all are relatively short. :)  
Reviews would be amazing!


	2. Second

**Second**

_The Prewett twins are only found again because it is Sirius' foot that comes down on Gidgeon's ribcage, causing bone to snap under the fall of his boot._

_Sirius yelps. His lit wand promptly flickers out as it clatters to the ground, but he manages to snatch it up again, and it is a horrified whispering of "lumos" that reveals what he had not wanted to accept in the darkness: two mutilated bodies, completely eviscerated, warm blood flowing, parts scattered, the light still lingering in their eyes._

Even their insides are identical,_ Sirius thinks. _Ha ha ha.

_His stomach heaves with sudden, violent sickness, and as if right on cue, Remus Lupin dashes around the corner._

Across, clue twenty-three: The informant. 5 letters.

"Sirius,_" Remus shouts. His robes are slashed open at the shoulder, his face is bruised and dirtied, his wand is held high over his head. "What are you—what's—oh, bloody Christ. _Shit._"_

_Remus runs the length of the cobbled alleyway and Sirius can only think it's very clever of him to have come right away, right back to the scene of the crime, looking scared and panting like he's out of breath. Like he just happened to run all this way away from the battle going on three streets over. Like he hadn't been the one fucking responsible for a double murder._

"_No, no, no," Remus mutters, staring at the bodies with his hand over his mouth. "This isn't happening."_

_Sirius wipes at his bottom lip, tries to spit the taste of stomach acid from his mouth, doesn't dare look down again._

"_Shit, Sirius, just get up. We can't stay here even if—_get up._ Now. We've got to get out of here."_

_R-E-M-U-S. It fits. Doesn't it._

"_They can't have known," Sirius tells him inanely, only because it's what he's always done—run to Moony at the first sign of trouble, because Moony was smart. Moony could fix anything. Moony could make everything alright._

_But this isn't Moony anymore. This isn't any Moony Sirius has even known. The fear, the fear that it's him, it's bloody fucking _him_, is sliding down his spine, icy and thick, despite the heat of a summer evening. _

"_We've been betrayed," Sirius says, before he can stop himself. "They can't have known we were going to be here otherwise. How the fuck did they find us?"_

_Remus answers, "I—I don't know," and he sounds so convincingly terrified that Sirius almost believes him. _

_It's got to be him. It's _got_ to be him._

"_We've got to get away from here," presses Remus, and breathes shakily before tugging Sirius back onto his feet. His robes are sick-soaked, the last thing anyone would want to touch, but still Remus holds on to his sleeve as desperately as a man trying to keep himself from falling off the edge of the earth. "Someone will—we'll tell them they're dead. We can't do anything for them—someone will come for them when it's safe—"_

"_That's just it, isn't it?" Sirius abruptly rips his arm from Remus' grasp and looks anywhere that isn't the ground, shoulders shuddering, mouth quivering helplessly as he speaks. "S'never fucking safe. We're in the middle of a God damn _war, _Remus."_

"_Stop," demands Remus, and he look at him despairingly, uncomprehendingly, all a very good show, Sirius thinks. "Just, stop, alright? Please don't be like this. We've got to move, they'll've found us in another second—Shacklebolt says we're reconvening and we've got to wait for orders—but I had to come find you, I thought you'd be—"_

_Remus falters, and Sirius callously supplies, "like _them_?"_

_Remus swallows, a weary expression on his dirtied face, and within the space of a single breath, Sirius' terror fades at last into a proper loathing._

Why did you even come after me,_ he wants to say. _Why the fuck would you even care, you fucking werewolf.

"_We promised to make it out alive together," Remus says, hoarsely. "Or don't you remember?"_


	3. Third

**Third**

Azkaban Fortress has never been warm, but it is particularly unpleasant when Sirius wakes up shivering and realizes that a Dementor has just gone past. He pulls his knees to his chest, waiting for the chill and the upsurge of misery to fade, but for a time, he can only think of three things:

1. James Potter, his unseeing gaze staring up at him, a look of fear still etched into his face;

2. Lily Potter, her body cold but lying on the floor as though only asleep;

3. The horrible, tremulous wails come out of the rubble—the tiny screams that haunt his nightmares (never dreams) even when he is lying wide awake.

Sirius rolls over onto his back. He presses his hands against his eyes, trying to wipe the images from his mind, but it's useless. With the Dementors, it's always useless.

Above his bed, the words "Sirius Black" have been roughly cut into the wall, as though slowly scratched in by a blunt tool. Faded blood is still crusted into the rough surface of the stone around it, as if there had once made a macabre attempt to embellish the carving. There is a story behind it, but it is a story of nearly ten years ago, and a story that Sirius does not like to tell.

When a second Dementor comes to check on the cell that holds Sirius Black, it only senses only a simple mind, nearly blank, but it passes without concern. Padfoot lies on the bed belonging to Sirius now, curled in on himself and trying to fall into the untroubled sleep that only this body can let him have.

Sirius Black clings to what he believes to be sanity, and even after all these years he clings to his memories of friends and the days where he was not perpetually cold and exhausted. These are the things that the Dementors cannot take, must not take from him, or else he will have nothing left.


End file.
